DOZORRO 5 years

DOZORRO
5 years

is a project of civil society organization Transparency International Ukraine which aims to ensure fair play in public procurement.

Our team has created and administers the dozorro.org monitoring portal, as well as the public and professional analytics modules BI Prozorro. In addition, DOZORRO is developing the DOZORRO community, a network of civil society organizations which monitor public procurement and report violations to supervisory and law enforcement agencies.

5 years

We have been operating for 5 years and during this time we managed to do many interesting things:

We launched the DOZORRO monitoring portal

We started public procurement monitoring

We created a regional network of public procurement trainers

We created the first DOZORRO community — a network of public procurement monitoring

We improved the monitoring portal

Together with our partners, we created an online course “Public Contracts and Public Monitoring

We conducted the first DOZORRO Fest

2016

2017

We published our first research in the field of defense and medical procurement

2018

We developed risk indicators for procurement monitoring

We helped develop risk indicators for auditors and create the relevant functionality in Prozorro

We introduced profiles for businesses on DOZORRO

We launched applications for analyzing procurement planning and procurement of medicines in BI Prozorro

2019

We developed an API for DOZORRO

We built risk-based monitoring into BI Prozorro

We launched an application for governing bodies in BI Prozorro

We helped launch the functionality for feedback on tenders in Poland, similarly to DOZORRO

We joined the development and advocated for amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On Public Procurement”

2020

We created a special tool for analyzing covid procurement

We advocated against localization

We focused on monitoring procurement to counter COVID-19

We launched the “What your school buys” map

We taught representatives of ATC how to conduct procurement

2021

We launched two new applications in BI Prozorro: for analyzing monitoring and E-catalogues

We improved the functionality for contesting with BI Prozorro

We launched an app “Indicators” with a description of all the indicators of the analytics module

We monitor school procurement

Onward and upward!

Our main achievements

One of our main achievements during these 5 years of work is the DOZORRO community of people united by an idea of fair play in the field of procurement.

First — these are, of course, civil society organizations that we have supported and taught to monitor procurement all this time. Now, they have become professionals in this field and work independently in their regions to improve public procurement. Some teach procuring entities how to properly conduct procurement, set up internal procurement processes, and some continue to monitor procurement.

Ivan Lakhtionov

However, the DOZORRO community as a phenomenon is much wider. It also unites procuring entities who want to conduct procurement according to the rules because they understand that it is more efficient. At the same time, the community also includes businesses that actively sell in Prozorro, and want the system to continue to be transparent and have clear and uniform rules for everyone.

Actually, anyone who wants public procurement in Ukraine to be transparent and efficient belongs to the DOZORRO community.

Our second important achievement is the monitoring infrastructure. For the public to control how the state spends its funds, we have created several tools:

Risk indicators — the functionality that allows to filter out the riskiest procurement transactions based on certain tokens. We helped develop risk indicators for the State Audit Service of Ukraine, which facilitate and optimize the work of auditors and are one of the grounds for starting monitoring.

The DOZORRO monitoring portal, first of all, allows to leave feedback on procurement. It also has separate functionality for CSOs and procuring entities. Civil society organizations can publish the results of their monitoring, and procuring entities can respond to feedback.

Public and professional analytics modules BI Prozorro are unique business intelligence tools based on Qlik Sense that help analyze public procurement in various sections.

And, of course, our main achievement — Prozorro is still functioning! On the one hand, this is certainly a joke because the functioning of the system is handled by the individual SE “Prozorro.” On the other hand, the lion’s share of our work is protecting the system from harmful initiatives and innovations. Unfortunately, we are constantly faced with attempts to control the system, or adapt it to the needs of certain persons. That is why we keep on monitoring legislative initiatives and advocating against harmful ones, for example, localization, and for positive ones. At the same time, we are constantly exploring the field to suggest improvements.

DOZORRO tools

A significant part of the work of the DOZORRO team is to improve our analytical tools. We have developed and support BI Prozorro’s public and professional procurement analytics modules. These tools use data from the central Prozorro database and allow to research it at various levels: from specific procurement transaction to national public procurement indicators. The modules are free of charge and help not only analysts, but also procuring entities, participants, and management and regulatory authorities.

The modules were launched even before Prozorro became mandatory for all procuring entities — in the spring of 2015. Since then, their functionality has significantly expanded. Now, the modules help analyze all stages of procurement, including planning in various sections, monitoring of the State Audit Service and appeals, so that all procurement parties can make quick and effective decisions.

Since March 2017, more than 260,000 people have used the public BI Prozorro. Approximately the same amount, for comparison, is the population of the city of Sumy.

Every year, BI Prozorro helps city councils that use the module save more than 160 hours when reporting. According to our survey, to generate a quarterly report for management, city council employees used to manually enter data on procurement of subordinate procuring entities in Excel tables. This took from 40 to 80 working hours. With the help of BI Prozorro, this can be done in a few clicks.

We also strive to make our analytical tools clear and convenient for users. Therefore, we constantly adapt them to your needs and conduct training. In the last three and a half years alone, we have conducted 77 training sessions for almost 3,000 users: journalists, participants, procuring entities, ministries, prosecutor’s offices, city councils, regional state administrations, large state enterprises, the State Audit Service, the Accounting Chamber and the state enterprise “Prozorro” itself.

Also we create instructions on how to use module for different types of users (only in ukrainian).

Monitoring

No system can exist without external control. Of course, the main controller in the field of public procurement is the State Audit Service of Ukraine. However, according to our research, less than 2% of all tenders fall under its monitoring. Therefore, our DOZORRO community (a network of civil society organizations) helps auditors and also monitors procurement.

In these 5 years, our activists in the regions

and sent more than 30,000 letters to procuring entities, supervisory and law enforcement agencies based on the results of their analysis

checked more than 34,000 procurement transactions

As a result,

in 1,611 procurement transactions, changes were made to tender documentation

987 procurement transactions were canceled

271 contracts were terminated

in 316 cases, members of the tender committee or authorized persons were brought to justice

56 cases of collusion were found and confirmed in the AMCU

63 criminal proceedings were opened

Procurement was also monitored by our regional journalists.

During the three years of the project, they wrote more than 400 pieces. And only in the last year, 5 of them led to the opening of criminal proceedings.

Our project’s journalists also explored socially important topics. Since 2017, they have published more than 80 pieces. Here are some of them:

One of our first high-profile investigations concerned the procurement of hybrid vehicles for the National Police. Our analysts have noticed that the police purchased a car under a negotiation procedure without justification, and not at an auction, which is probably why there was an overpay. The guess was confirmed by the NABU investigation: the overpayment amounted to more than UAH 240 mln. Because of public exposure and the proceedings, the Ministry of Internal Affairs agreed that the contractor return UAH 124 mln to the budget. The investigation is still officially ongoing.

Thanks to the materials of Serhii Makarenko, our journalist from Cherkasy, the prosecutor’s office opened criminal proceedings for embezzlement of funds during procurement of snow removal. In 2019, the winter was almost snowless, but local housing and municipal services spent almost UAH 7 mln on winter maintenance.

Thanks to the publication of the ZBK, NABU and SAPO detectives have been investigating violations of the development of a portal for selling tickets for the Boryspil Express since 2018. In 2020, the NABU finally served the director of the branch of the main information and computing center of the JSC Ukrainian Railways, his former deputy, and two other persons with charges on abuse of official position.

Cool cases can also be small-scale ones: within the framework of our project with the Local Media Development Agency “ABO,” journalists in Pervomaisk investigated a corrupt scheme for purchasing sports playgrounds. Based on their appeal, the prosecutor’s office opened criminal proceedings and served two persons with charges.

Analytical center

In addition to monitoring specific procurement, we also monitor general trends in the field: we prepare in-depth research and analytical materials and analyze draft laws.

In 5 years, we have published 17 extensive studies. The most recent ones:

All studies can be viewed at the link.

In addition, we provide spot materials where we analyze procurement of certain specific goods or services. Here are some of them:

Our specialists also constantly analyze draft laws related to public procurement. In the last two years alone, we have worked on more than 50 such initiatives.

We also coordinate the expert group under TI Ukraine on improving the public procurement system, which includes representatives of business, procuring entities, authorities, and the public.

Communications

We strive to share with you the results of our work, as well as all important events in the field of public procurement. In addition, we are certain that coverage of corruption is an important step towards overcoming it.

In these five years we have published 4,700 blogs, analytical materials, and pieces of news. We wrote about failures and how to fight them — as well as shared victories and secrets for achieving them.

In February 2018, we started recording comments and interviews that our speakers give in the media. During this time, there were more than 100 of them. 65% of these comments and interviews are on television, 20% on radio, and the rest are for online media and print media.

The Ukrainian media also spoke about our analytical materials. In 2020 alone, DOZORRO and our analytical tools were mentioned in the media more than 2,500 times. This is twice as much as last year.

We try to make it as interesting as possible for you to follow public procurement and participate in its control. Therefore, among other things, we pay a lot of attention to high-quality infographics and funny illustrations. We are also creating more and more educational and entertaining tests (only in ukrainian):

Team

You can only reach new heights with a cool team. We are proud of the people in DOZORRO. You can get to know each of us personally — just choose a video (only in ukrainian):

Training is an integral part of our work. After all, in order to improve the sphere of public procurement, we need to grow ourselves. Our specialists Anastasiia Ferents and Yaroslav Pylypenko completed their training in the course “Public Procurement Specialist” by the Kyiv School of Economics. Yurii Hermashev and Oleksandr Orlov strengthened their knowledge of working with the QLIKVIEW business analytics tool.

In addition, we are always happy to share our knowledge and experience. In the last year alone, 4 interns joined our team.

International recognition

In 2018, the OGP recognized DOZORRO as the best project to engage citizens in reforms in Ukraine.

Last year, our partners’ project TAPAS “Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services” was awarded the annual Digital Development Award from USAID for working together with TI Ukraine in particular on the development of the DOZORRO ecosystem.

DOZORRO and Prozorro helped to make the public procurement process more transparent. The Prozorro system, the DOZORRO portal, and the monitoring network, as well as BI Prozorro analytical tools, have created a truly unified and transparent approach to solving systemic corruption in public procurement.

Moreover, in partnership with foreign companies ePanstwo (Poland), K-Monitor (Hungary) and ECONLAB (Czech Republic), we have collected best practices for public procurement monitoring. Specialists from other countries will be able to use these best practices to choose the best solution for themselves, based on the best practices that already exist.

In addition, as part of the project with OCP, we shared our experience and methodology for monitoring procurement aimed at combating COVID-19 together with civil society organizations and journalists from Moldova and the Kyrgyz Republic.

We advised researchers from Princeton University on open data in the field of procurement, public oversight of procurement, and detection of collusion in them.